The influence of hypermetropia is very apparent in the percentage of
periodic squint. While in myopia, emmetropia, and slight hypermetropia,
the sum total of permanent as compared to periodic squint is as 100:
19·5, this number mounts in hypermetropia of 1 D. to H. = 3 D. to 52·5
and in the higher degrees to 59 per cent. Despite the small number of
cases it is probably no mere accident that in the highest degrees (of H.
= 5 D. and more) this percentage is calculated at 77·7.
But just this undoubted favouring of periodic squint by hypermetropia,
helps to show that this condition is one of the causes of squint, but
not the only one, for in periodic squint just those conditions are
wanting which induce a permanent deviation.
It is further proved by the table that in convergent strabismus, myopia
appears just about as frequently as the higher degrees of hypermetropia
(of 3 dioptres and more). The fact that these are not so strongly
represented in convergent strabismus, as one would have expected
according to his theory, had also struck Donders. "This cannot be
wondered at," he continues, "the power of accommodation, even with
increased convergence, does not here suffice to produce clear images.
One gains much better ideas by practice from imperfect retinal images
than by correcting, as far as possible, the retinal images by a maximum
of accommodation." I can concede neither to the facts on which the
theory is based nor to the theoretical structure itself.
An additional statistic which I drew up of the cases of hypermetropia
which occurred during one year in my private practice, showed that the
higher degrees are rare in the same proportion as cases of convergent
strabismus are, with the corresponding degrees of hypermetropia.
Further, however, I maintain that as a rule, at the age when squint
usually begins, the accommodation really suffices to overcome even high
degrees of hypermetropia. In all cases where we find full acuity of
vision without correction of extreme hypermetropia--and this is
frequently the case in young persons who do not squint--we may assume
that the accommodation perfectly suffices to produce clear retinal
images, without excessive convergence. In full acuity of vision even
high degrees of hypermetropia are no trouble to children. Asthenopia,
which occurs in children in connection with hypermetropia, is nearly
always accompanied by defective vision. Were the increased demand on the
accommodation really the cause of convergent strabismus, asthenopia
would be far more common than it is among hypermetropic children who do
not squint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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